Clarinet
क्लैरिनेट
A single-reed woodwind from Europe, adapted to carry the gamakas of Carnatic music
The clarinet, a single-reed woodwind, has a place in Carnatic music, where A. K. C. Natarajan played it in the nadaswaram style and won the Sangita Kalanidhi for 2008.
History & Evolution
The clarinet came to South India through the court of Serfoji II of Thanjavur, who imported Western instruments for an orchestra; a letter of 1802 records four clarinets in the palace. The historian Sriram V., citing the musicologist S. Seetha, writes that Mahadeva Nattuvanar first used it for Carnatic music, and that it later joined the chinna melam, the ensemble that accompanied devadasi dance. For long it stayed a band instrument, heard in the Mysore Palace Band and the Madras Corporation Band, and it won acceptance more slowly than the violin.
The 20th-century record is firmer. The Carnatic singer Sanjay Subrahmanyan recalled in 2008 that, early in A. K. C. Natarajan's career, nadaswaram players at temple festivals regarded the clarinet as a band instrument and asked him to keep away. Subrahmanyan credits Natarajan with breaking into the nadaswaram players' own domain. Natarajan's grandfather, Kuppuswami Naidu, had already played the clarinet for Sadir dance.
- Around 1700
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Invention in Germany
The Nuremberg maker Johann Christoph Denner is generally credited with creating the clarinet about 1700 by adding keys to the chalumeau, an earlier single-reed instrument. - After 1802
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Mahadeva Nattuvanar and the chinna melam
The historian Sriram V., citing S. Seetha, credits Mahadeva Nattuvanar with first using the clarinet for Carnatic music. It later joined the chinna melam, the ensemble that accompanied devadasi dance. - 20th Century
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The Era of A. K. C. Natarajan
A. K. C. Natarajan, born in Tiruchirappalli in 1931, learns the clarinet from his father and, from the age of ten, vocal music with Alathur Venkatesa Iyer and nagaswaram with Iluppur Natesa Pillai. He first performs in public in 1946. - 1994 to 2022
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Honours for A. K. C. Natarajan
Natarajan receives the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1994, by the Akademi's own data, the Music Academy's Sangita Kalanidhi, its highest award, for 2008, and the Padma Shri in 2022.
Technical Aspects
How the Clarinet Makes Sound
The player's breath sets a single reed vibrating against the mouthpiece, opening and closing a tiny gap. A single reed sets the clarinet apart from the nadaswaram, whose double reed, the seevali, is shaped from a dried grass that grows on the banks of the Kaveri.
Most clarinet bodies are made of African blackwood, also called grenadilla; others are ebonite (hard rubber) or metal.
Bore and Keys
A nearly cylindrical bore sets the clarinet apart from the conical oboe, bassoon and saxophone. Because it behaves roughly as a closed cylindrical pipe, the clarinet overblows a twelfth, an octave plus a fifth: the register key gives the second register. The bell acts mainly on the lowest notes.
Players name three registers. The low chalumeau keeps the name of the earlier instrument the clarinet grew from; the clarion sits in the middle and the altissimo above it. In written notation the chalumeau runs from E3 to B-flat 4 and the clarion from B4 to C6.
The clarinettist Hyacinthe Klosé and the maker Louis-Auguste Buffet developed the Boehm system of keys around 1840, adapting Theobald Böhm's flute mechanism. A. K. C. Natarajan took keys off his own instrument to play Carnatic music; the section on gamakas explains why.
Playing Gamakas on the Clarinet
To play gamakas on the clarinet, A. K. C. Natarajan changed the instrument. The Carnatic singer Sanjay Subrahmanyan reported in 2008 that he removed some keys so that it played more like a nadaswaram, and that it could then reproduce most nadaswaram gamakas and phrases. The nadaswaram player Seshampatti Sivalingam, Subrahmanyan adds, found its sound hard to tell apart from his own instrument.
The Music Academy's journal credits Natarajan with bringing the vocal and nagaswaram banis, or styles, to the clarinet. At the Academy's 2008 conference he demonstrated gamakas on it in the ragas Todi and Varali. Neither account records which keys he removed or which key system his clarinet started from.
Journey to Mastery
Follow this structured journey to master this discipline
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Embouchure and breath control
A steady, even tone in the low and middle registers is the first goal. The work centres on the embouchure, the way the lips and jaw hold the mouthpiece so that the breath sets the single reed vibrating, and on the breath support that long held notes need.
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Open-hole fingering and slides
This stage teaches the student to glide from one note to the next without a break in the sound. The work is fingering over the open holes in the nadaswaram style, the approach A. K. C. Natarajan brought to the clarinet, practised on short pairs of neighbouring notes before longer runs. The technique section describes how he altered his own instrument.
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Ragas and scale exercises
Ragas come next. The student learns to play the scale of one raga at a time together with its characteristic phrases and ornaments, which depend on each note's melodic context. Each phrase starts slowly and moves up to concert tempo, and the student repeats it until it keeps its shape every time.
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Advanced gamaka execution
Complete compositions are the goal of the final stage. The student applies gamakas to the notes where each raga calls for them and begins with a tana varnam, which sets out its raga's phrases and ornaments and opens the concert. The kriti, a three-part song and the main concert item since the early 20th century, follows once the varnam is secure.
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